


FUMÉE

by 7veilsphaedra



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-26
Updated: 2009-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-03 18:43:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7veilsphaedra/pseuds/7veilsphaedra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU for prompt. Lotus Eaters, Philosophers, Artists — old lovers reunite in <i>fin de siècle</i> Paris.</p>
            </blockquote>





	FUMÉE

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nouvellebrielle](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Nouvellebrielle).



> Many thanks to beta, whymzycal.
> 
> Springkink 2009 Entry, Prompt: 11th November: Saiyuki, Gojyo/Hakkai: reincarnation in 1800s Bohemian Paris- "Hello, Stranger."
> 
>  
> 
> **Warnings:** AU Reincarnation fic. Adult situations in adult language, violence, drugs.
> 
> **Disclaimer:** This Saiyuki fanfiction story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Kazuya Minekura. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. The content is for adult readers only.

At one in the morning, after the theatres and cafés of Pigalle had emptied and their revellers had long dispersed, the clunk of the water pump in the custodian’s room interrupted Germaine’s studies. He squinted through the shadows and dim gaslights to where Béatrice, the charwoman, armed herself with a mop and fresh rags.

“If you do not persuade Monsieur Crespule’s party to retire—” rhythmic splashes of water sloshed into her bucket like milk from a cow’s udder, “—there will be trouble before morning.”

With a sigh, Germaine closed his textbooks. He was far from brilliant. Between his studies and his night job, he was barely managing to scrape marks together to maintain his place at school, but it was enough. A diploma was all he required to find decent employment as a clerk within a merchant shipping company, which would give him enough financial security to travel without needing the bonafides of the diplomatic corps or the legion. The rest of the world might clamour to come to Paris, but Germaine could barely wait to leave.

Misty landscapes from an exhibition of Chinese brush-and-ink paintings at Le Salon _Jeux des Paumes_ had worked a spell over his heart. His night job had allowed him to meet with traders and smugglers from China, and through their stories, he experienced an uncanny attraction to the East. His initial destination was the French enclave in Guangzhouwan, but somehow, he felt that it was just a staging platform for greater adventures inland. He wasn’t sure what he would find in China, but something was drawing him there—something he didn’t fully understand: a yearning, some sort of primal connection which could only be felt, not reasoned. His advisor at the _Lycée Louis-le-Grand_, Frère de Chardin, understood and supported his efforts.

Of course, the good brother had no idea how Germaine passed his nights, and more than anything, Germaine’s amoral _laisser-aller_ about the things which transpired on his watch would’ve distressed him. Germaine had lied to de Chardin, telling him he was apprenticed with a trading company to earn the passage east.

It wasn’t a complete lie. Trade was involved—the sort he should’ve fully expected, given the nature of Bertrand Rousselin, the person whose father had hired Germaine based on his recommendation.

At least this job gave Germaine the peace and solitude to study.

Yet, if Crespule’s party led to trouble and the gendarmes were dispatched, the establishment’s true proprietors would never be arrested—upstanding members of society that they were. Germaine understood he was being paid to take the fall for them, and were he to land in jail, his position at the Lycée would vanish, along with all his threadbare dreams.

Crespule was a regular client, however, and after the Cancan parlours closed, Germaine had accepted his group as a courtesy to the old man’s patronage. From the shouts and laughter curling down the marble and parcel-gilt staircase, they had partaken of too many spirits, hence the mop and pail; Béatrice was not inclined to wash up after mere dirty footprints.

Germaine picked his way over gaudy Turkish hall runners and filthy chequered tiles alongside foyers where lotus eaters reclined on their _couchettes_ and muttered to the dark. When he slipped past the red velvet curtains into Crespule’s lounge, the acrid funk of alcohol, opium, cyphre, sick and sweat did not give him a moment’s pause—nor did a glimpse of two plump and rosy prostitutes on all fours. If Germaine was not compelled to return to his textbooks, he even might have been tempted to join in the card game which enlivened the room in another corner.

From the vacant, open-mouthed stare which met Germaine’s eyes, Crespule and a couple of his companions no longer stretched across the solid earth of their _rècamier,_ but flew through more bizarre regions of the astral plane. Germaine peered through the flickering lamps at play upon the hallucinogenic patterns of flocked wallpaper. He was looking for the soberest, most sentient person there, one whose eyes were not clouded.

At the card table sat a bespectacled fellow who kept his face clean-shaven, although the current mavens of style decreed that gentlemen with lush beards, sideburns and moustaches were also distinguished with superior intellects and sexual potency. Germaine couldn’t quite draw the same connection, himself; he dutifully scraped off his own stubble every morning, and it had never kept the whores of Montmartre from teasing or offering him free samples (which he sometimes took up, if they were the carefree type who didn’t expect him to linger.) His mane was long, sleek and the colour of blood. As for this man, glossy black wisps of hair fell from under his top hat past his waist, something which had clearly taken many years to grow. Germaine squinted. The man seemed to be youthful, though it was impossible to tell since his eyes were completely shielded behind those smoked glass spectacles; ageless was probably more apt.

He also chewed on a pipe filled not with opium, but tobacco. If Germaine could not measure the man from the look in his eyes, he could tell from the franc notes piled before him, the largest heap on the table, that he had kept his wits about him.

“Monsieur, I don’t mean to alarm you, but we’ve received word from an informant. The gendarmes are on their way.”

A sinister smile crawled across the man’s lips. “This concerns me?”

Germaine’s night job was seldom demanding. The clientele, wholly surrendered to listlessness and indolence, never challenged him. His main difficulty was shaking those who became trapped in fearsome nightmares back to reality, or evicting those whose funds ran out. It was only the ones who did not smoke that created problems for him. Men like this fellow, who would not even remove his hat when he entered a building, which indicated a pugnacious sort of free-spiritedness that Germaine usually admired, but which didn’t bode well for gentlemanly persuasion.

Germaine assessed the risks if it should come down to a fight, whether it wouldn’t be best just to leave the merrymakers to their riot and vomit and prostitutes—to maybe contain them within the room somehow until they passed out or staggered away on their own—when he was suddenly struck by a glimpse of tattoo which curled just under edge of the man’s collar.

It was some sort of horticultural emblem. From the look of it, the tattoo ran over his face as well, but was well-hidden behind layers of stage make-up, the kind _artistes_ like La Goulue caked on. Perhaps he was a member of a secret society. It was likely his strength and fighting skills were superior to Germaine’s; there was a whiff of something dangerous about him. The lines beneath his shirt traced taut, solid muscles—an attractive physique.

The man became aware of Germaine’s scrutiny and returned his frank stare. It recalled the young concierge to his task. “Usually _Paris Match_ sends reporters to trail the police.”

The man coolly raised his bet, tossing the bills into the center of the table with fingers so sharply manicured in the oriental style, they resembled talons more than human hands. Germaine watched as one player folded, and the others met, before the black-haired man deigned to answer, “You imply we are threatened with exposure?”

“It sometimes happens that gentlemen such as yourselves have enemies. They mark where you have entered and see these festivities as their chance for revenge.”

A bass, threatening growl, like the snarl of a tiger, rumbled in the recesses of the man’s throat. Germaine stepped back in alarm, but the sound had been too low for anyone else to register.

Someone on one of the couchettes did register it though, if differently. One of Crespule’s companions thrashed and shouted in alarm, his arms lashing out at some unseen creature of the air, but the only ones who noticed his distress were those who hadn’t imbibed the evening’s last course. Germaine reached over and stroked the man’s head until he calmed. “Eh-eh, Monsieur, you’re going to make it unscathed, aren’t you?”

When he looked back, he noticed the stranger observing him intently.

“My enemies are all dead.” The stranger continued to play. “As are my friends. Since I have the chance tonight of making new ones, I do not wish for the evening to end so readily. It is a profitable night for me.”

“Then, before the gendarmes arrive and force it to end,” Germaine insisted, “shall I summon the _calèche_ to take you and your party to another club?”

The man’s full house was beaten by a flush. He snorted with disgust. “It seems that my luck has changed.”

Parisian to the core, Germaine nodded agreement while cloaking barbs in solace, “Might I suggest you leave from the trade entrance?”

* * *

Inhale.

Smoke curled around the tips of his hair, moved along his throat with a satisfying scrape, wrapped its softness around his nerves like a cushion. Germaine had managed to snatch four hours of sleep between his shift at the club and the start of the day’s classes.

As usual, Bertrand held court in the alcove by the back lane. Germaine ignored the cluster of swaggering young men who surrounded him.

The break was really an excuse to assimilate information Germaine had learned during Frère de Chardin’s morning lecture on Buddhism, and their chatter was an aggravation and nuisance. Bertrand’s social standing attracted them, but Bertrand tagged after Germaine unbidden during the breaks.

Frère de Chardin’s lecture had scandalized some students. A young man—Germaine thought his name was Rémy; he really only knew him by sight, one of the many other gypsies who used this stairwell as a smoking lounge when Bertrand came out—complained about how he could not understand the lecture or why a Jesuit would teach such a subject.

It was the only invigorating moment for Germaine, who liked to see the complacency of these pampered rich boys shaken up. Even so, he was not interested in replacing the national religion with another. De Chardin would have to try much harder to lure him to the Montparnasse regions of _la rive gauche_.

“You ran into some trouble early this morning.” The hands which curled around his sleeve were not the cleanest in the world, for all the rings and cufflinks which adorned them.

A fat black spider dangled just above Bertrand. It had dropped several meters from the white column mouldings which distinguished the Lycée as a Masonic design. Germaine wondered if the arachnid had spotted something tasty in his protégé’s blond bristles, or if it seemed that the thatch would offer better hunting grounds.

The way the spider hovered reminded him of one of the women he had bustled out with Crespule’s party the previous evening. Under the influence of much cheap brandy and opium, she had clutched at his jacket, running her hands over the muscles sculpted beneath it.

_“Such a handsome youth! How I wish I could make you my cherie. If I had the powers of Catherine Bouillion, I would cast a spell, imprison you in my boudoir and eat you up tout suite.”_

“Catherine Bouillion, Mademoiselle?” He had gently wrestled her toward the door.

“A witch, a magnificent witch, the last great Parisian witch! They burned her alive on Île de la Cité in 1691. Do you know how I remember that?”

“How could such a sweet, young girl remember such a terrible thing?”

“Très charmant! Hmm, I wonder. Peut-être, because it was the last thing the good sisters taught me before they asked me to leave the convent.”

He was just about to bundle her into the open carriage when she surprised him. “You are Jean Renaud’s brother, are you not?” The name stopped him short.

“You know him, Mademoiselle?”

“You don’t look alike. There is no family resemblance at all, qu’el dommage. He mentioned he had a younger brother who worked nights at La Club Rousselin.”

“Jean knows where I work.” This had been the single, most astonishing item of news Germaine had received in years. He had not heard from his brother since their mother died, and he was left with the Jesuits. “How does Jean know where I work?”

“Ah, well you see, Rousselin’s men—” she had started to tell him. But he never learned what Rousselin’s men had to do with Jean, for Monsieur Crespule chose that moment to become violently ill.

Germaine shot a glance to Bertrand’s circle of admirers. Rémy had inadvertently diverted their attention with talk of horse-races.

“Nothing I couldn’t manage.”

Bertrand nodded and continued to murmur. “If you ever run into problems which require more … persuasion, send a message with Béatrice to _Le Coq en Feu_.”

Germaine frowned. The footmen employed by Rousselin’s associates were brutes. Any melée would bring the gendarmerie down upon them for certain. With a prison record, he would wind up trussed in Rousselin’s webs forever.

“Thank you for your kind suggestion.” He raised the cigarillo to his mouth.

Bertrand tugged at his sleeve. “Come, let me taste.”

For the third time that week, Germaine levelled disbelief at his companion. “After where your lips have been?”

Rémy snickered, until Bertrand swatted him on the back of the head.

“Stingy mutt!” He bobbed with impatience. “I left my case at _La Casino_. Can’t you spare one?”

“I gave you some yesterday. This is my last.”

“Let’s roll the dice for it.”

The air pressure changed and the men stilled, listening, alert. Usually, they could gauge from the footsteps which storey—second or third—the intruder came in on, but this time, there was no sound. Germaine palmed his cigarillo and swung the outside door open just to play it safe.

The priests seldom used this stairwell, not because they were unaware of what was going on—the stink of stale smoke made that much obvious—but because the inconvenience outweighed the leverage of their authority. Sometimes, however, the class proctors made a surprise round.

Cat’s-paw tread upon the stairs, the stranger’s presence was felt more by inner force than sound. An oriental with black hair, glossy like chunks of coal destined for the furnace, which fluttered in the rush of February frost. Absinthe eyes, poisonously cold at first, then—for just an instant—Germaine caught hold of the consciousness beyond their surface, a flicker of interest, something familiar, something warm, something shared. Did he and this new boy know each other?

“Are you going to cry?” Rémy bayed at the newcomer. “Are you off to tattle on us now?”

All connection disappeared. Before he pushed his way past the doorway to the first floor of their Lycée, the newcomer glanced back at Germaine. Smoke caught in Germaine’s throat.

Afterwards, when he thought longer upon it, Germaine did not know why Bertrand did what he did next. Germaine thought it might have been because his classmate wanted to shock the newcomer, or perhaps Bertrand wanted to make sure that the newcomer never forgot him. Quite possibly, Bertrand had sensed this subtle attraction between Germaine and the stranger and interfered out of jealousy, or maybe there was a trace of legitimate interest on his part—always risky in their circumstances—but when those poisonous green eyes flicked over to him, Bertrand brazenly sank into his knees and eyelids as though dragged down by the gravity of his lust.

The green eyes widened.

Entranced, Germaine lifted the cigarillo to his lips and inhaled, tilting his head back until it rested against the bricks. He wanted to see how the newcomer would react to Bertrand’s peculiar theatrics. Germaine himself was experiencing viscerally what Bertrand enacted in mockery. Behind his head, Germaine could feel his red hair cling to the clay. He expected it looked like blood streaks, claw marks down a lover’s back—it was such a ridiculously dramatic colour. He was too tired to care. He licked tobacco-corrupted lips as Bertrand snaked his hand down the front of his school blazer to the front of his pants and, with one lewd, languorous motion, pulled. The stranger did not even pause.

“Fuck me,” Bertrand moaned in falsetto, like some cheap _‘femme vicieux’,_ one the boys would find on any street corner in Pigalle chasing after prospective clients. “Fuck me, _mon beau chevalier!”_

First, there was a moment of profound shock and silence. Then Rémy doubled over. The alcove gusted with laughter. There was an inrush of overheated air as the intruder pushed through the doorway back into the school corridor. Through mullioned glass, Germaine watched his back grow progressively smaller in the distance.

“What were you thinking?” He laughed, grabbing Bertrand’s shoulder from behind and shaking it just a little. “You will get us all in trouble, imbecile.”

“His precious airs make me ill. He’s just another charity case like you.” Bertrand shrugged and pawed at Germaine’s sleeve. _“Vièn-toi,_ give it here.”

Germaine lifted the remains of the smoke to his lips and took a last, luxurious inhalation. The paper crackled as it glowed to the filter. With a wink, he passed the stub to his classmate, before pushing past the oaken door to follow the black-haired boy’s footsteps into the college. Bertrand’s curses and the spent butt bounced off his back.

_“Tell me, how is that scoundrel, my brother?”He asked the prostitute after they managed to prop up Monsieur Crespule against the side of the open-roofed carriage._

“You know Jean: he sells a painting or a sculpture, and instead of using the francs to buy bread or a new overcoat, he buys more paint.”

“I am relieved to hear he is selling his work at least.”

A look of sadness and suffering had flitted across the prostitute’s face. Germaine folded his arms around her and held her close for a moment. The gesture took nothing from him.

“Not so much, dear boy,” she finally said, her voice straining under the effort to keep it light and insouciant. “He could make the sort of art that would sell. He could have a dozen rich patrons tomorrow, but he insists upon producing obscurities—”

“Which nobody understands,” Germaine smiled.

Her smile disappeared. “No, they understand, bon garçon. They understand all too clearly. He is a very effective artist, after all.”

* * *

Virgil, the newcomer, was named after the classical poet. Germaine remembered this as they knelt beside each other at the sacristy for the evening mass. He had overheard snatches of conversations from the priests, disjointed phrases about academic brilliance and a dead sister. Germaine was nowhere near brilliant. He was simply lucky to have landed in this institution.

Yet, after one glimpse of those green eyes, all of Germaine’s ambitions disappeared like smoke. China no longer beckoned. All that China had been—its strange familiarity, its exoticism and ritual, its mysterious, subliminal pull—was displaced, usurped by this new connection to Virgil, one that felt more grounded and satisfying by virtue of the flesh-and-blood reality of the person kneeling next to him. What was that?

Germaine stared openly as the Monseigneur stepped in front of Virgil to administer the Eucharist.

His heart started to race. Blood and heat bloomed across his face.

Virgil was on his knees. Virgil’s skin looked lambent. Virgil’s eyes were the colour of wormwood drinks. Virgil’s hair drank light. Virgil’s muscles were lean and supple, but well-defined. Virgil parted moist, red lips. The tip of Virgil’s tongue skirted over his bottom lip as the sacrificial wafer was placed upon it. Virgil’s throat muscles rippled when the chalice was lifted to his lips and he sipped the blood of Christ.

By the time the altar boy wiped the rim of the chalice and the priest moved to stand in front of him to repeat the ritual, Germaine’s mind was kidnapped by obscene images of Virgil; Virgil on his knees before Germaine; Virgil parting those lips for Germaine; Virgil swallowing—oh holy whores of Babylon! Germaine had never been so thoroughly transported.

Instead of returning to his pew as the row of supplicants peeled away, he slipped out of the chapel to the darkness of the nearest water closet. He didn’t have time to light the candle, he could barely lock the door fast enough, and his fingers weren’t nearly nimble enough to unfasten all his buttons. Just enough to plunge his hands down, yank out his engorged flesh so he could touch and pull, once-twice … six-seven times. His muscles contracted, and his release exploded so violently that the reverberations pulsed through his tailbone and up his spine.

He sank against the stone wall to heave air into his lungs and wait until his heartbeat thudded back to its regular pace. The full moon shone through the clerestory windows high above him, its silver light icy cold. He lifted his hand and stared at the mess which was starting to chill.

This extraordinary sense of connection to Virgil left him flummoxed. He had never been besotted with a man before, especially a man who was, to all intents and purposes, a stranger.

Nobody—especially not Virgil, not even Virgil’s namesake on his travels through inferno—knew how depraved Germaine was. With that cold knowledge, he scooped the cup into the colder pitcher of water and rinsed his hand clean.

* * *

When Germaine looked up from his copy of _The Aenaid,_ the full moon had travelled from the lobby’s southeastern windows to full south. Ghostly light bounced off the heavily carved caryatids and escutcheons which decorated the entranceway, casting otherworldly shadows in their wake. A riot of shouts and brawling carried down the narrow streets from near the vicinity of the Basilica. It was the week before Lent, and Carnivale had begun. The noises were still too far away to concern him, but he expected more clients would soon arrive.

A carriage rolled past the club’s doorway, spraying slush under its wheels. He heard it stop, the door of the cab open, and even the champ of the horse and the tinkle of _centimes_ poured into the driver’s glove. Germaine pulled a pouch of crystallized resin and an empty pipe from under the counter in readiness, but he was still taken aback when he looked up to see the gambler from the previous evening’s celebrations. The man had re-materialized silently before him, his smile still mirthless, his eyes still cloaked behind smoked glass.

“Monsieur,” Germaine leapt to his feet.

“I suspect that will be unnecessary,” The stranger replied, gesturing with a tilt of his chin to the accoutrements of the opium ritual.

“You are aware of what sort of club this is?”

“Naturally,” the man said as he removed his gloves and cloak. He left his top hat on.

“Not a brothel. Nor a casino.” Germaine moved out from behind the desk to accept them. “We do not serve food or drinks, and you will find no Cancan or chanteuses.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Then I am at a loss to understand what we can possibly do for you.”

The man reached over with the handle of his walking stick and ran it along the line of Germaine’s chin, as though caressing him and threatening to crush his windpipe at the same time. “The gendarmes did not raid last night. After my companions were sent safely home, I walked to the front of the building and waited for the men to arrive. They never did.”

“True.” The young concierge replied without missing a beat. “It seems our informant misled us.”

“Neither your informant nor the accuracy of his information are relevant to me. After some consideration, I think you owe me.”

Germaine could not believe his ears. “On what do you base that conclusion? And what do you propose I should do about it?”

“What does it matter how I arrived at it, Germaine Castonguay from the _Lycée Louis-le-Grand?”_

Germaine froze. Fingers of ice crawled over his skeleton.

In that moment, he realized he had been pushing himself all along into this position. He had always wanted to know what he would do if faced with such a choice: the choice to live freely—if even as a libertine—to be true to his nature in the face of all threats and consequences, or to cave and capitulate, to accept involuntary servitude. It was a moment of supreme clarity.

He remembered Bertrand’s suggestion from that morning and looked around for Béatrice. She was nowhere in sight; so much for the promise of reinforcements.

“I want you to allow me the use of your body for my pleasure, the rest of this evening,” the man explained.

Germaine stared in incomprehension until realization finally sank in, along with an odd and unexpected spasm of pleasure. His voice was strangled with disbelief. “Or you will do what? Tell on me?”

With a loud bang and supernatural speed, Germaine was pressed against the front desk, caged by the stranger’s arms. His face peered into Germaine’s so closely, he could see the outline of the tattoo under his makeup. Germaine’s heart banged against his ribs. A weird green light reflected in the stranger’s eyes even from behind his spectacles. His head leaned to one side eerily as he murmured in Germaine’s ear. “I hadn’t considered that. Did you want me to?”

Germaine’s instinctual reaction was to fight back, but he suspected he would be easily overpowered. The strength which flowed through those arms seemed to be pulled from the earth’s center. For a few moments, all he could do was stare agape at the stranger while the carriage clock on the mantel above the fireplace ticked. He was called back when it chimed. “Why would I do such an outrageous thing?”

“Because I know you, probably better than you know yourself,” The stranger’s voice dropped in volume and tone. Germaine could feel hot breath against his throat, and in spite of the fear clawing its up his spine, he felt unnaturally alive. “We have known each other in the past. Because you are that sort of man, and because I will give you pleasure in return.”

The words shot straight to his groin.

“You are mad, Monsieur.” Germaine’s mind was fazing into blankness. “Before last night, we never met in our—”

The doors burst open.

_“Alôrs, garçon! Dépèche-toi et prévellons-nous tes bourgeouns meiux. Vite! Vite! Vite!”_

The lobby was a-swirl with the commotion and laughter of nearly a dozen gentlemen and their companions, with cloying perfumes and pomades, with the rustle of silk petticoats and flash of jewellery.

Mercifully distracted, Germaine automatically bundled the stranger’s cloak back into his arms and turned to these new clients. He became so busy attending to their needs that the circumstances which preceded their appearance completely vanished from his thoughts. It wasn’t until they were settled in a guest lounge with adequate supplies, and he returned to his station that recollections of that peculiar event returned to trouble him.

The stranger had left a note on the desk. With some trepidation, Germaine unfolded the paper. Nothing was written on it. Instead, there was a plant cutting, a slip of dark green vine, the same sort of vine he had glimpsed tattooed upon the stranger’s neck.

Disturbed, Germaine picked up the vine to look at it more closely. It looked like the strange plant in the tropical aviary at the horticultural museum, the one named “Touch-me-not” whose leaves curled in upon themselves at the brush of a finger. Within his fingers, the vine responded like a sentient thing, first curling around his finger as though caressing it, then crumbling into dust.

His last period that afternoon was a spare and he had the night off, which was a relief. The late nights and full days were catching up to him, and he looked forward to a good night’s sleep. He had shaken off Bertrand and his côterie by making a sudden right angle turn into the library, where he had some research to conduct. Now that he had gathered all the necessary materials, he was preparing to leave when he had spotted Virgil in the philosophy section of the library stacks. He approached the other boy by inventing a reason to reach over his head to extract a copy of something or other.

When Virgil glanced up, Germaine took the opportunity to greet him in the Chinese he had learned from one of the suppliers who came to their shop.

The young man stared at him as if he had sprouted a second head, and then shook with silent laughter.

“I don’t speak much Cantonese,” Virgil finally replied in perfect French.

“I see.” Germaine felt his face turn red. “What did I just say to you?”

“If you had been speaking Mandarin, you would’ve just asked me if I would be willing to let you suckle my breasts.”

“_Sacré!_ Under different circumstances, that might a convenient thing to know, but I said only one word. How could all that fit into one word?”

“Inflection and tone. It is how the Chinese language is structured, whichever dialect you use.” Virgil’s face remained curiously deadpan. “And I have no breasts.”

“What?”

“I am not a woman. I have no breasts for you to suckle.”

“I—um …” Germaine stared, gobsmacked. “Am I supposed to argue with that?”

“At least not the milky sort, sorry.”

“No, I’m the one who should be sorry, messing up a simple greeting like that. And I’m especially sorry about the boys—”

“What?” Virgil looked puzzled.

“The other day?” Germaine prompted, and instantly regretted it as Virgil’s face turned cold. “There were just fooling around, but they went too far. _Mèrde,_ I better catch up on sleep before I make an even bigger ass of myself. _Á beintôt.”_

* * *

When he awoke, it was from an unusually deep and satisfying rest. Usually the dormitory baked from heat off the radiators or, as coals in the distant furnace room banked down, grew too cold, but tonight he was perfectly warm and comfortable. His limbs felt restored if heavily weighted into the mattress, the drowsiness not yet shaken off.

He could tell from the silence in the hallways that it was nearly ten o’clock in the evening, the usual time when Vespers ended. Students—unless they had special dispensations like his, on account of the night job he held in addition to his studies—were required to attend the evening mass and prayers.

Germaine had a vague recollection of Bertrand bustling in, finding him asleep, trying to rouse him for supper, and stomping out. The door had opened once or twice since then, as his roommates came and left. Peace was restored. He had slept some more, and now …

He tried to stretch and open the bed curtains, and found himself unable to freely move. A restraint was wrapped around his arms and wrists. He flexed and pulled curiously, wondering how he’d tangled himself so thoroughly in his sheets.

When the restraints began to rustle and move, he froze with terror. They were a terrifying and sentient life form which adjusted under his more forceful stirrings with whispering noises. His heart began to thump a primal, synchophated rhythm. He glanced over and saw that his arms were wrapped in vines—Dionysian vines, which were also woven through his hair, stroking his scalp like a lover’s fingers.

Someone was nuzzling sleepily against his neck. His arm was wedged beneath another person’s neck, a person with long, silky black hair—the stranger who had visited him at the club.

Germaine started, waking his visitor. Sleep. Wakefulness. He was no longer sure where the perimeters of these states lay. This had to be a dream, or the belated vestige of a hallucination from having breathed in too many fumes at his night job.

“Bonsoir.” The stranger’s ears were long and pointed, a feature his top hat had hidden. Germaine could see that his eyes glowed green, and their pupils were slit like those of a cat. When he opened his lips to lick them, Germaine caught sight of sharp incisors. He wondered briefly, if the man—no, the demon!—if the _demon_ were to move his feet, would it turn out that he sported a cloven hoof?

The vines were not tattoos. They were living organisms crawling within the creature’s skin.

“Mon Dieu!” Was it possible that the priests had been right all along? Germaine broke into a cold sweat and started to cast his eyes about for talismans of the Church, things that were supposed to be useful under these sorts of situations: a bottle of blessed water, a crucifix, a strand of rosary beads. There would be a crucifix over the door, he recalled sure enough, speared with a dry, braided and very dusty palm leaf left over from the previous year’s Lent. Germaine hoped that such things worked. It would be damnably inconvenient, whilst being dragged off to Hell, to find out that they didn’t.

“Don’t jump to such bizarre conclusions,” the creature appeared to read his reactions. “You are cherished. Why should I have any desire to hurt you?”

“I don’t know, Monsieur,” Germaine stammered. “Perhaps because you are ‘the enemy of man’?”

The demon looked offended. “Who would say such a thing?”

“The Bible, the priests ...”

“If you gave any credence to such strange ideas, why do you work where you do? Why does the thought of my touch stimulate you? Don’t try to deny it. I can smell it on you.”

“Because I have never had any reason to believe them before. Because the devil has never actually materialized in front of me before.”

“I see.” The stranger’s long black hair fell across Germaine’s face. “But I am not the devil.”

“You certainly look like him, and the priests would say that, being full of deceit, the devil would deny who he was.”

“This is very disheartening, Gojyo. You were never swayed by superstition before. What does your heart tell you?”

“Gojyo? You have me confused with someone else, Monsieur. My name is Germaine, and my heart is beating a little too quickly to tell me anything clearly. Even if you were not a demon, why would you be so quick and free to bind me in my own bed?”

The demon sat up, sweeping the curtains aside, and slung his feet over the edge of the bed. Germaine saw that they were real feet. The air which rushed in was cold, with the usual pungent notes of unwashed boys, dust, mold and cast-off attire awaiting the laundries. Not a trace of brimstone.

“Humans perish; demons live. Even half-blooded humans—the children of a nature spirit and a human, the type of human you were when we last loved each other—even they perish, while demons live. While demons go on living forever, apparently, unless we die through acts of violence.”

The room was filled with shadows and moonlight, with a bright yellow streak under the door from the lights in the corridor. The demon’s eyes were illuminated by nothing, but Germaine could see them.

“Since you last died, I’ve searched the world for the where and when you would be born again. It was never my inclination to pass my time in brothels, opium dens or gambling parlours. It was just that they were the most likely places to find you. Your name was Gojyo when we were companions together in China.”

“China?” Germaine felt ill, dizzy, close to passing out. When he last _died?_ The where and when he would be born again? When they had last loved each other? “But I don’t recognize you at all. Why would you assume I’m the person you’re looking for?”

“Curious, isn’t it? Since there are so many ways in which you aren’t the same at all, but I’m now certain. It is not the sort of thing which could ever be detected from superficial characteristics.”

“Then what makes you so sure?”

“Funnily enough, did you know the rhythm of your heart is exactly the same as it was when we were last alive together? Not an instant of hesitation or increase. The same things still cause it to jump and grow calm. No one else has the same heartbeat, the same cadence, the same _musical notes._ I can still hear them clearly, you know, even when my senses are limited by my human form. They are seared into my memory.

“I noticed the same thing with your breath. It bears the same rhythmic patterns and harmonic chords. Why would it be so alike when your life is so different? I can tell when you are startled, when you are angry, when you are aroused—Oh, yes!” He staved off Germaine’s protest, “I don’t even need to smell you to know when you want me.

“But in terms of the ways in which you are different, the last place where I expected to find you was at a _Lycée_. That threw me off. Of all the things you were when you were Gojyo, a scholar was not one of them.”

His words grounded Germaine.

“Still isn’t,” he snorted. “I attend only as a means of making my way back to China, but—Wait! How did you find out where I went to school?”

The demon’s vines evaporated.

From the pocket of his waistcoat, he pulled a rose quartz snuff box in the shape of a tiny pig with solid gold hooves. He flicked open the clasp—a charming feature, also fashioned from solid gold, which had been designed to look like a collar around the pig’s neck. From a slip of silk in the pig’s belly, he removed three tiny silver bands, which he then carefully clipped over the shell of his ear.

Germaine stared as the demon transformed into a man. His waist-long hair vanished into a short, tidy trim. His eyes remained green but no longer glowed. The shadow of vines, which he had hidden beneath makeup, disappeared. When the transformation was complete, Germaine was left stunned, only able to stammer, “Virgil!”

Virgil stood stiffly. His laughter was brittle and glassy. “It’s Hakkai, actually. My name—Cho Hakkai.”

“ ’ukkai!” Germaine made a valiant effort. “Chaud ’ukkai!”

“Never mind,” Hakkai smiled. “Just continue to call me ‘Virgil’.” Virgil lifted himself out of bed. He walked over to the hurricane lamp and lit the wick. The match he struck was the only sulphur Germaine smelled all evening. The room was bathed in a golden glow.

“Vespers is nearly over, and the boys are returning. As much as I would like to remain at your side, it would probably be best if they didn’t find me so close to you.”

Germaine could hear the footsteps tramping along the halls and voices calling in the staircases. Virgil made ready to leave.

“Wait! You can’t just—you can’t leave me with—I don’t understand. I need—”

As if on cue, the door opened and Bertrand waltzed in. He stopped short at the sight of the young man standing next to Germaine’s bed. Bald hatred flicked across his features to be instantly replaced with a mask of suspicion.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Virgil and Germaine ignored him.

“Another time,” Virgil told Germaine. Without deigning to look at Bertrand, let alone answer his question, he turned on his heels and left.

Germaine sank back into his pillow, forearm slung against his shoulder, mind reeling.

“Hey, answer me!” Bertrand persisted, his voice prickling with thwarted neediness. “What does the buffoon want?”

Germaine scowled.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t lie to me. I know something is up. Why was he in our room?”

“For pity’s sake, Bertrand, I asked him some questions about China, since that’s where he’s from, not that it’s any of your business. Satisfied?”

“China?” From the expression in Bertrand’s face, it seemed that most of his suspicions were assuaged. Most, but not all, and Germaine could measure his own reactions to know that his curt response didn’t ring entirely true. “You aren’t still thinking about going there, are you?”

Their other roommates had started to arrive. Germaine leaned over and grabbed the edge of the bed curtain.

“As insurmountable as the obstacles seem,” he told Bertrand, closing the curtain as a means of ending the discussion, “yes, I am, actually.”

Bertrand’s voice, when it called again from beyond the curtain, was meeker and more subdued. _“Álors,_ Germaine—”

He steeled himself.

“Germaine?” Finally, after it was clear that he wasn’t going to reply, Germaine heard Bertrand sigh and leave.

* * *

That was the end of all rest for Germaine that night. He kept trying to convince himself that Hakkai’s appearance at the club and in his bed, not to mention his transformation into Virgil, had all been an apparition, a figment of his imagination, perhaps a belated reaction to fumes ingested at the club.

All night long, he tossed and turned, trying to work out what had happened according to what he understood about the world. It became apparent that the simplest, most sane and rational-seeming explanations were the ones that belied his direct experience of reality. It came down to a choice between truth and the appearance of sanity. By the time morning rolled around, convinced that his mind had slipped into a _tabla raisa_, he had a raging headache.

* * *

_"Tiens,_ Germaine!” The Jesuit’s call interrupted his reverie. “Please join me. There is someone I would like you to meet.”

Germaine twisted against the flow of scholars disgorged from the morning’s second series of classes. Frère de Chardin beckoned from his office, the textbook used in his class about Buddhism tucked under his arm.

A boy of about fifteen, fresh from the south, stood as he entered the cubbyhole behind his advisor. His face was tanned. His hair was dark brown, but sunstreaked. His cheeks were ruddy and his eyes bright.

“My nephew, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,” the brother introduced them. “He shares your fascination with China, and I thought it might be productive if the two of you met.”

Someone had sent up a tray with tea and sandwiches. Germaine was relieved. He would not have to spend his lunch hour without food after all, and the service gave him some time to compose his thoughts on his own fickle attraction.

“What draws you East?” he finally asked.

“Palaeontological excavations,” the boy frankly admitted in an accent strongly flavoured with Languedoc.

“Dinosaur bones?”

“Human fossils. Like Darwin, I am interested in the origins of mankind.”

Germaine choked a little on his tea. Suddenly he understood what Rémy had been going on about. The De Chardins were a peculiar type of Roman Catholic.

“And you?”

“I’m not sure,” he admitted, and due to exhaustion from the previous night’s churn, was unable to stifle a helpless laugh. “There has never been any reason, except that I have always felt driven to go there. It is almost as though I must return to complete something. Yet I have never been there in my life, so how could that be? Foolish, isn’t it? If I try to rationalize it, the result feels false.”

He reached over and added another spoonful of sugar to his tea. “I suppose you think I’m frivolous.”

Pierre blushed. Germaine suddenly remembered being that age and how presumptuous it had felt to judge the people who were older than him, and how mistaken they had been in inferring such precociousness of him.

“It sounds to me—” de Chardin stepped in, “—as though you have a connection there from a previous life.”

Germaine dropped the teaspoon onto the tray with a clatter.

“Sorry.” He felt compelled to explain his clumsy reaction. “It’s just that you’re the second person in as many days who has told me that.”

The Jesuit directed a keen look at him and started opening drawers and shuffling papers on his desk. After a minute, he found was he was looking for, a small humidor hidden under a stack of essays. He opened the box and the room filled with earthy scents. He offered Germaine one of his cigars. Germaine stood there scratching his head, unsure of how to react since it was forbidden. _“Pense-tu!_ I know what you boys do in that back staircase. The smell of smoke doesn’t disappear after a cigarette is gone.”

“I usually smoke something less intense,” Germaine confessed, and accepted the gift.

Pierre opened the window to let the rain-saturated breeze sweep through de Chardin’s tiny, book-lined office. There was no view beyond the casement except for other walls. The window opened into a narrow square-sized, open-roofed chute which only served to let in the daylight and fresh air. If a person stretched their head and twisted around, they would see the zenith above the Sorbonne, but an office that size was no place for cigars without such a window.

“Just don’t inhale,” De Chardin told Germaine after trimming the cigar and lighting it for him.

“Hunh?” Germaine looked up from the match, mid-inhale. “Why not?”

The effect hit him like a sack of bricks. Germaine literally fell back into his chair and counted himself lucky that he didn’t pass out completely, the way his heart started to race. Then the coughing and hacking began.

De Chardin picked up the wastepaper basket and held it ready in case his student should lose the contents of his stomach.

It took awhile for Germaine’s dizziness to pass. Pierre tried, unsuccessfully, to suppress a laugh. Germaine was too incapacitated to cuff him on the head and remind him who was older, bigger and stronger. He satisfied himself with delivering the wheezy epithet ‘monkey’ from the boy’s interest in evolution.

“Damn, that’s strong.” Germaine wiped the stream of water from his eyes. “Warn a fellow in time, won’t you?”

“I thought I had,” De Chardin said, sheepishly. “Cigar smoke is intended to be tasted in the mouth like wine, not inhaled in great puffs.”

As they sat back and ‘tasted’ their smokes, Germaine felt himself pinned under their scrutiny. The ritual of smoking shielded him, negated the need to fill space with senseless words, or deal with the discomfort of being stared at so unremittingly.

“About this former life of yours—” De Chardin finally got to the point, “—in China, who mentioned it?”

“Virgil,” Germaine replied.

“So you have made friends with him? That’s promising. I was hoping the two of you would get along. What did he have to say about it?”

Germaine laughed and smoked. Then he shook his head and laughed some more. “You—you people, you talk about such things so casually, and I don’t even understand what you are saying. This is madness. I will lose all reason if I listen to you.”

“Then forgive me for pointing out that your so-called sanity hasn’t served you very well.” De Chardin flicked the ashes of his cigar into the Galle bowl on his bookcase. “As your marks indicate, your best, most brilliant moments are those marked by more instinctive, more intuitive responses, not reasoned one.”

The taste of the cigar turned bitter in Germaine’s mouth. “Is that a fancy way of telling me you think I’m stupid?”

“Not at all. It is my way of saying that any ape can reason. These halls are filled with morons who can parrot the latest theorems with no additional thoughts as to _why_ they are learning about them, or what place their knowledge might have outside the school or laboratory.” De Chardin waved at the door. “Do you think it was for their benefit that I turned our philosophy series to Buddhism?”

Germaine couldn’t believe his ears.

“Are you saying it was for mine?” Then, several moments later, “Because I can’t say I understood much of it.”

“What is the word to describe the Buddhist doctrine of rebirth?” De Chardin launched into a quiz.

“Do you mean reincarnation?”

“Precisely. And what is the means by which one leaves the cycle of life, death and reincarnation?”

“Erm, enlightenment? Nirvana?”

The keen of gulls aloft over the Seine floated through the window.

“It seems to me you understand the matter well enough,” the professor decreed.

“But the class was more complicated than that,” Germaine accused. “Something about ‘working’ toward Nirvana with diligence? There always seems to be some sort of catch, some secret handshake.”

“You must have me confused with a priest,” de Chardin replied. “I was only trying to fathom your connection to China.”

Fingers of ice stroked Germaine’s spine again.

“Perhaps Virgil might be able to shed some light on the matter,” the professor continued.

Germaine experienced an inexplicable desire to protect Virgil—Hakkai, whoever he was. If the demon’s true nature were to be revealed to the Jesuits, he sensed the consequences would be more tragic and far-reaching than De Chardin’s breezy camaraderie belied. It had been two hundred years—according to the opium-addled woman Germaine had met for a mere ten minutes barely two nights prior—since Catherine Bouillion was executed less than a mile from where they sat calmly smoking, but there were always people who wanted to return to those times.

“I must admit confusion, Frère de Chardins; aren’t the Jesuit brethren the Order which purges the Holy Roman Church of heretics and blasphemers? I don’t recall any discussion of reincarnation in the Church’s doctrine—or of evolution, for that matter.”

“We are not ignorant brutes, Germaine. The Jesuit order encourages study, investigation and experimentation, through the conviction that the results will only lead to a stronger experience of the Faith. It would be a shabby faith indeed that couldn’t sustain itself under a little scrutiny and challenge. I expect, at the end, all conclusions shall point to a single unified truth, an Omega point as it were. As the saying goes, ‘All roads lead to Rome.’”

“I see … No, actually, I don’t. Not to be contrary, and—as you’ve pointed out, I’m no genius—but it seems that at least one of these roads is, in fact, bypassing Rome altogether and heading straight to China.”

“In this lifetime or the next, if you do not attain your Nirvana, then I expect you will be obliged to make a return journey to the west.”

The cigar was starting to make Germaine feel ill, and he had smoked less than a third of it.

“Do you want the rest?” He offered it to Pierre.

“Not on your life,” the nephew laughed. “The last time he gave me one of those, I was sick as a dog for three days afterwards.”

Germaine looked around for an ashtray. Dismayed, he held the rest out to de Chardin, “What do I do with this? Toss it out the window.”

“You’ve had your fill?”

“More than enough.”

As De Chardin stubbed the cigar out in his glass bowl, Germaine finally summoned the courage to ask, “What do the Buddhists say about demons?”

“About what?” De Chardin gave a strange sort of half-laugh, half-puzzled scowl.

“Demons—creatures of the air? Those pointy-eared devils the sisters were so fond of scaring us with when we went to primary school?”

“Yes, I know what you’re talking about. I’m just surprised you mention them, that’s all. You strike me as more of a modernist, not a man strongly motivated by primitive fears.”

Germaine had to scratch his head over that one. Up until the previous evening, he would’ve been inclined to agree. “Let’s just say I’m curious about the Buddhist equivalent. You say that all this observation and investigation and philosophizing will eventually lead back to Catholicism—”

“You misunderstand. I didn’t necessarily say that.”

“It sure sounded like that to me.”

“And me,” Pierre chimed.

“I am more interested in the places where the different faiths intersect,” De Chardin explained.

“If Catholicism has its devil and hell, its demons and temptation, its sin and damnation, what does Buddhism have? Where’s that point of intersection?”

“Oh, I think I understand now. I haven’t found any Buddhist doctrines about devils so much as delusions and Maya, or glamour, but I suppose their idea of damnation would be one more spin around the wheel of life, death and reincarnation.”

“They believe we already exist in hell?”

“The experience of reality being entirely dependent upon one’s state of mind, but essentially, yes. Or heaven—again depending on one’s awareness.”

Germaine absorbed this new information just as the effects of the cigar started to wear off, and leaving him drained and wan.

“I hate to cut such an interesting visit short.” He rocketed to his feet. “But I must take my clothing to the laundries for the upcoming week, and prepare myself for this afternoon’s lectures. Thank you so much for your hospitality, professor. It was nice to meet you, Pierre. I wish you the best in your studies.”

De Chardin looked a little sad, as though he hadn’t succeeded in reaching through to Germaine during this visit. They traded perfunctory courtesies, and Germaine left with his head swimming. He wasn’t sure what to make of their exchange. The information he’d received didn’t seem to be of the sort which could help him to better understand Virgil.

* * *

Since he had to take his satchel of clothes and bedding to the washerwomen anyway, he decided to stop at the address near Les Halles where the prostitute had claimed his brother now lived.

After checking the address to make sure it was right, Germaine strode through a narrow passage which stank of garlic and stale piss, hearing conversations and crying babies clearly through the walls, up four dark flights of stairs. He knocked on the door and ignored the bump of a mouse moving under the carpet next to the baseboards. The air was so cold he could see his breath hanging on it. There was no answer.

“Jean?” he called. “Jean, are you in?”

An ancient woman, wrapped in shawls, sat at the window overlooking the street at the end of the corridor. Germaine thought to ask her if she had seen Jean.

“Madame,” he asked. She did not move, so he presumed she was deaf and approached her.

“Madame,” he asked loudly. “Have you seen the man who lives in this suite?”

The face which turned to him was scarred from an ancient acid throwing. He could see teeth through a hole in the crone’s cheek. One eye was completely white. The other focused on horrors that he had no ability to share. Her answer to his inquiry was to start shrieking in terror, as though he were the devil … as though he had appeared to her as Hakkai.

In response to her shrieks, he heard a man thump on the walls and shout, “SHUT UP! Shut up, old hag! Shut your ghastly death-squeals before I come out and make them real.”

Another door opened, and a haggard, harried woman bustled out to the old woman’s side.

“Now you’ve done it,” she scolded as she wrapped her arms around the old woman and moved her towards her tiny room. “Won’t you leave before you cause any more trouble?”

“Madame,” Germaine tried a last time. “Do you know Jean Renaud, the man who presumably lives here?”

“If that is the man who lives there, and if he were at home, he doesn’t exactly want to see you, does he? Otherwise he would answer the door.”

It was like being slapped in the face. With a furious blush, Germaine left.&lt;

* * *

He still felt shaken by the time he picked his way up the street towards the Boulevard where he could hail a cab. Pedestrians and urchins jostled him, and he felt thankful he had had the foresight to hide his francs, when he looked up and saw Jean walking straight toward him. He stopped in his tracks.

Jean noticed him at almost the same moment. He also stopped in surprise. The two brothers stared.

Abruptly, Jean turned and ran.

“Jean!” Germaine gave chase. He would be damned, after coming all this way and going through what he had, if he was going to miss out on a visit with his own brother. He wove past vendors and tradesmen. Some even tried to directly impede him, no doubt mistaking him for someone in pursuit of a thief. He pushed them roughly aside.

“Jean, damn you!” He called after his back in an abandoned alley. “I’m not giving up. If you want me to chase you all the way up La Tour, I shall, so help me!”

His brother finally came to a shuddering halt.

“What is this all about?” Germaine, huffed and gasped, bending over with his hands resting on his knees after closing the distance. “Are you too ashamed to see me?”

From the mingled defiance and regret that distorted his brother’s features for one moment, Germaine figured he hit the target perfectly.

“Come on!” He grabbed Jean’s sleeve, and pulled him into a public house for a glass of ale, and a plate of roasted sausage, potatoes and cabbage. It looked like the first meal Jean had eaten in a week.

Germaine told him about his school and his job, leaving out the part about China and Hakkai. When he mentioned de Chardin and his unorthodox philosophies, however, Jean came alive.

“But this is what I’m doing! This is my work! To tear these old structures apart and build new altarpieces. Places of sanctuary and worship that are not limited by …”

Germaine tried to focus—his brother’s face had become so animated, his arms waving with excitement—but it was the joy and pride which enlivened his brother’s body which held meaning for him, not the things he actually said. All this talk of the modern world, the new world, the new age of mankind, it flew over Germaine’s head. When he looked around, all he saw were human beings acting the same way they had always acted—some cruel, some generous.

He didn’t know why it was so easy to understand de Chardin when he spoke of such things, but why his brother’s words sounded garbled to him.

“Come!” Jean suddenly grabbed his arm. “Let me show you.”

Germaine barely had time to pay the publican before Jean whisked him out the door and through the maze of Les Halles to a particularly old and rickety lane, strewn with garbage and broken cobbles.

“These are my Stations of the Cross,” Jean proudly announced as he showed off his latest sculptures.

Germaine stared. They were dioramas assembled from old crates, dried weeds, rags, stones and bits of garbage. In spite of their materials, there was a certain aesthetic charm to them. Germaine squinted, trying to understand. At the back of this particular crate was something called a ‘collage’ made from torn pieces of rags, corrugated cardboard, and posters and playbills that Germaine recognized from the Pigalle district, with the strange effect of Christ being surrounded by Cancan dancers. Pieces of broken china adorned the edges of the crate. The workings of broken watches were arrayed throughout the diorama: coils and gears, old cases, watch faces.

“Broken watches?”

“In the Garden of Gethsemane,” Jean explained as though it were the most natural conclusion to draw, “the apostles were supposed to keep watch.”

Germaine understood that Jean did not intend to be sacrilegious, but he couldn’t imagine that others would understand. He realized that Jean’s enthusiastic ravings would result in a judgment of lunacy. Yet when he thought of the old woman he had met in Jean’s tenements, these particular Stations of the Cross seemed to him to be assembled from materials more fitting for her than the most translucent and vibrantly painted windows of Notre Dame. It was as though Jean’s art declared that the impetus for worship transcended the grime and dirt and affliction of circumstance.

“How long did they take you to craft?” he asked, running his finger over a broken glass swan-neck.

“Weeks, months to conceive of them.” Some of the joy drained out of Jean’s eyes.

“And you will be exhibiting them at a Salon, yes?”

“No, not yet.”

“But there is a gallery which has agreed to sell your work?”

“No.”

“A patron?”

By now, Jean’s eyes held no light, whatever the smile on his face might have said.

Germaine was so sorry to see his spirits deflate, he decided to ditch his afternoon lectures, and asked his brother to go through each station and explain them to him carefully. At each station, he even lit the tiny stub of votive candle and burned a bead of frankincense to make the experience complete.

In the piece where a discarded porcelain doll’s head had been transformed into an icon of the black Madonna, Germaine swore that one of the eyes had winked at him. He wondered if this bore any connection to Virgil, and if the entire events of the past week had been a hallucination. By the time Jean finished, Germaine had no better understanding of the art pieces than when he had started, but his heart felt warm and full.

The lane was saturated with the deep blue shadows of dusk. A few people started to straggle through on their way to other destinations. As they turned the corner back towards Jean’s flat, Germaine caught a glimpse of someone at the polar end of the street, kicking one of Jean’s statues to pieces.

He took Jean on a quick shopping expedition through the market stalls before they closed, loading a crate with bread, cheese, ale, and some wrinkled late season carrots, cabbages, onions and apples.

“Aren’t you the least bit curious how I found out where you lived?” Germaine asked, adding a bottle of wine to the crate.

Jean’s shook his head sheepishly, “That Rousselin, he promised me he would never say. What a liar, heh?”

“But it wasn’t Rousselin; it was someone else, a woman, _une fille-fillette._ She had no idea she was betraying your secret. I was shocked, after so many years of silence, to learn, first of all, that you were still alive—or as alive as might be expected under the circumstances—”

Jean snorted with sardonic laughter.

“—And secondly, that you had been in contact with my employer. Did you know Rousselin from before? Is that why he hired me?” Since Jean would only shake his head and laugh, the questions kept pouring from Germaine. “Or did he contact you suddenly to find out about me? How did they find out about you?”

“It is true, they contacted me, but I did not try to make them hire you. They knew where you went to school, and traced you from the Lycée back to the seminary where I brought you after Maman died. They found out about me from the old abbot who took you in.”

“What did they want to know?”

“They wanted to know about our connection to each other. I told them we have none. It was severed the day I brought you to the Jesuits.” Jean’s voice turned very soft and quiet. “Eh, Germaine, that Rousselin, he’s a dangerous man?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t think so at first, but that was before I found out he investigated me so thoroughly. Now I think he probably is.”

“When I took you to the seminary, I had hoped to spare you from those like him.”

“Yes.”

“How is it you wind up working for such a man all the same?”

“Destiny? I don’t know.” Germaine held up a very limp bunch of turnips and, deciding that they were not good enough, set them back on the stall. “But now that he knows about you, that changes everything. I’m concerned about the implications.”

“Changes what? What implications?”

Germaine considered what to say, and then dismissed all the words.

“Nothing important. We are reunited again. That’s all that matters.”

He suddenly found himself pushed with his back against a wall, Jean’s fingers laced through the collar of his overcoat. Jean’s face was red and angry. It was so sudden, Germaine almost dropped the food on their feet.

“Excuse me,” his brother’s voice trembled. “Please do not humiliate me by patronizing me. When I left you at the Seminary, we stopped being a family. That was the point. You were no longer beholden to me, and I was no longer responsible for you. It was a break. If there was something you needed to do with your life, you have to be free to do it.”

Germaine flushed, filled with strong emotions that he did not understand. Jean’s words hurt him deeply. They also filled him with a strange, wild, liberated sense of gratitude.

“Besides, what can Rousselin possibly do to me?” Jean pulled away, his anger dissipating. “I live in the slums. My artist materials are garbage. What can he possibly take away from me?”

“He could hurt you.” Germaine protested. “He could blind you, or break your legs.”

“Pfft. I could look the wrong way and be run over by a trolley on the Champs d’Elysée. The piano movers might be lowering a piano outside some windows, and the rope breaks, and the piano falls on my head. The mastiffs at the dogfights might break out of their pens and run down the street attacking everyone, including me.”

“Yes,” Germaine agreed, “but this situation is different from those in that this one could actually happen.”

“Pfft. Then I will find myself in a comfortable bed at the charity hospital. Stop inventing tragic endings to my life.”

“You! How can I possibly leave you to such a sad fate?”

“It is very nice to see you again, Germaine, and I appreciate the gift of food and wine since my budget does not allow for many luxuries these days, but this is my choice.” Jean’s face brightened. “But what you are saying behind all this misguided concern for me is that you have something you want to do—an opportunity, a wonderful chance! What is it? Tell me.”

“Nothing, yet. It’s something I’ve been mulling over. I may go to China. It seems that things are lining up for me to go there.”

“Ét bien?” Jean’s smile was counterpunched with a small worried frown. “As an opium trader?”

“No, anything but, unbelievable as that might sound—as an explorer, perhaps, some sort of an adventurer, maybe a teacher. Frère de Chardin’s brother mentioned something about human fossils. Maybe I will go dig for them. Maybe I will even find the remains from my last lifetime.”

“Your last—sorry?”

“Nothing, just a bad joke.” Germaine fished his francs from out of the pouch he wore inside his shirt sleeve, and paid for Jean’s groceries.

They embraced, Germaine clinging to his brother’s coat as though it were possible to nourish him and fill him with strength through touch alone. “How can you tell me to go with such a clear mind and unburdened heart, when right now, just the thought of it is tearing me up inside?”

“I want you to go. I want you to leave with a clear mind and unburdened heart because that’s exactly what I would do. That’s exactly what I did.”

Then, without knowing whether Jean would still be alive the next time he looked for him, if he ever got the chance to look for him again, Germaine left for his job.

* * *

At midnight, a very drunk Bertrand Rousselin and two loud, drunken companions burst through the club doors.

“We will be occupying the first lounge,” he announced to Germaine. “Please make it ready for us.”

“Bertrand, your father would not—”

“You are arguing with me?” Bertrand’s face was full of laughter, but his eyes were full of rage. “Who do you think hired you? My father? Pray, allow me to disillusion you and stop stalling. We wish to sample the latest merchandise.”

So Germaine complied. After dislodging the occupants, which wasn’t too difficult given their heavily lethargic conditions, he set Bertrand and his cohorts up in the best room, and returned to the desk.

The sound of laughter and carousing chased him through the pages of his textbooks, making it difficult to concentrate. His mind was already unsettled by the day’s events, but Bertrand’s sudden shift in behaviour ate at his tranquility. Germaine didn’t understand. Bertrand had never come to this club. He wouldn’t be caught dead in this section of Paris.

If Bertrand were trying to press a point with Germaine, perhaps to reinforce dominance or reassert control, it was futile. Germaine could easily walk away from him, his entire social circle and their influence without a backward glance.

Soon enough the noise died away, as Germaine knew it would under the effects of the poppy, but the absolute silence which replaced it unnerved him even more. He decided to go upstairs and check on Bertrand to make sure he hadn’t done something even more foolish and dramatic.

He moved silently, and wondered how to open the door without being observed, but it turned out he needn’t have bothered. The door was wide open. Germaine was meant to see what transpired inside.

There, amidst the overwrought red velvet and gold fringe, Bertrand was stark naked. He was kneeling on a _rècamier,_ his body leaning back, supported against the torso of the bigger man, his head lolling against the man’s shoulder. The man was fucking him from behind. Germaine could clearly see the ruts and thrusts. The second companion was performing fellatio. As opposed to what he originally thought, they weren’t being completely silent. The room was filled with soft grunts and sighs.

The sights, sounds and smells—for all their abandonment and venality—were not enough to tempt Germaine. As a rule, his body responded rather automatically to sensual displays, so this was curious. He might’ve been enticed if Bertrand had tried this earlier in their relationship. Even so, it would’ve ended the moment Hakkai had twined into his bed.

Germaine considered shutting the door, now that he had received his eyeful, and leaving the men to enjoy their pursuits in privacy, but decided not to bother. It was too pitiful.

Instead, he pulled out a piece of hotel stationary and wrote, _ “B. R. , I regret that I cannot meet your expectations, and feel saddened since, before this morning, I was never made aware of the full extent of them. Respectfully, I resign. G. C.”_

Then he put on his coat and hat and left the opium club forever.

* * *

Instead of heading straight back to his room, he made his way to Virgil’s. He wasn’t sure why. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning, and the door was shut fast. Virgil was bound to be fast asleep with his roommates. Several times, Germaine lifted a loose fist to knock on their door. Each time, he lowered it again, and out of indecisiveness, paced the corridor.

He nearly jumped with surprise when the door opened and Virgil came out in his nightshirt, dressing gown, slippers and cap.

“I was just thinking about you,” he whispered.

“You always were a very noisy sort of thinker,” Virgil replied, rolling his eyes.

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine. At least you didn’t just barge in, throw off your clothes and jump naked into my bed like you used to. Not that I objected, but it annoyed the roommates.” Virgil closed the door behind him, “Let’s go.”

“I actually pulled those sorts of stunts?” Germaine asked after they crept past the night station where Frère Clément snoozed in his chair.

“On the roommates?” Virgil directed a strange look at him. “Absolutely. Every chance you could get.”

Virgil’s words disoriented Germaine. He felt like his past was a bog full of hidden, sprawling roots waiting to trip him up into a pool of quicksand.

“Don’t fret. It wasn’t as though your behaviour was wholly unwarranted. We had tried—that is to say, _I_ had tried the subtle approach,” Virgil explained. “They had long ventured past the point of blind innocence into the territory of willful ignorance in terms of letting us share a private room together. It was time to unmask the proverbial sledgehammer.”

Was that innuendo?

Germaine digested this as they made their way up the staircase, past the servant’s quarters, into the clock tower.

“Virgil?”

“Hmm?”

“Was I a woman in that life?”

Virgil laughed. Then, when he caught Germaine’s distressed expression, changed it into an unconvincing cough. “Far from it. Why? Does that bother you?”

Germaine looked over at Virgil, whose face reflected the moonlight like a marble statue.

“No, I suppose it doesn't.”

Once they arrived at a place where their sounds and speech were masked by mechanical ticks and chimes, he finally got to the point. “This is so awkward. Listen, I am not the person I was in my last life.”

Virgil’s face was impassive. His arms were folded across his chest. His hips tilted to the left.

Germaine fidgeted. “I just don’t want you to feel disappointed.”

“Okay.” Virgil finally said.

Germaine wondered if that was a dismissal. When no further argument or discussion was forthcoming, he started to leave.

“It is strange seeing you as a young man again.” Virgil suddenly spoke. “We grew old together. You changed many, many times over the course of your lifetime. Your mind, your body, your emotions, they were all completely different between the time we met and the time you left me.”

Next to the doorframe, Germaine could hear doves under the eaves. “You don’t look that old.”

“There is nothing human left in me to age, except my memories of what it was like to be human.”

“You’ve had other relationships.”

“I never stopped looking for you.”

How many years? How many lovers? Germaine wanted to ask. “How can you stand—I mean, I’m still—I must seem like a child to you.”

“It will be interesting to see what sort of bollocks you make of this life.” Virgil walked over and threaded his arms around Germaine’s neck. “I would very much like to be around to watch that, if you don’t mind.”

“Did we have other lives together?”

“I only recall the one life, but according to the War God, Homura, and the Merciful Goddess, Kanzeon Botsatsu, there was at least one other time we were together. It was even messier, apparently—ended in the outright collapse of Heaven.”

“Wait a minute? War Gods? Goddesses?”

“Things tend to get very exciting whenever we’re together.” Virgil nuzzled against Germaine’s ear, sending exciting shivers to other spots in his body. “Do you want exciting things to happen?”

Germaine nodded, electrified.

Virgil’s lips traced across his cheek to his mouth. Germaine opened up and was messily and thoroughly kissed. His knees started to buckle and his eyes rolled back.

Then Virgil pulled away with a loud, sticky smack. After a few pants of breath, he said, casually, “Or we could just stick around and wait for that job you always wanted as a shipping clerk to come through.”

As he turned to leave, Germaine grabbed his arm and reeled him back.

Within seconds, they were prone, pulling off clothes, and exchanging almost frantic kisses. Virgil rolled Germaine onto his back, looked into his eyes to verify that this was, in fact, what he wanted. Germaine nodded to reassure him, stretched his arms out langourously in surrender, and ... promptly fell asleep.

He had been awake for over forty-eight hours straight.

* * *

Next morning, Germaine woke up fully clothed, but in his own bed. For a few minutes, he baffled over how the slight-seeming Virgil managed to carry him there, but then recalled the supernatural strength of Hakkai in his demon aspect.

Bertrand’s bed, in the dorm that he and Germaine shared with two others, had not been slept in when Germaine changed his clothes for breakfast. Nor did Bertrand show up for breakfast. He did appear for class, however, and once Germaine caught sight of him, all lingering, niggling concerns for his welfare vanished. Bertrand was alive and physically unharmed. Sometimes Germaine could feel his eyes, laden with resentment and fury and, beneath all that, pain, boring into the back of his head, but he paid the sensation little heed.

When he found himself cornered and surrounded by Bertrand’s circle of friends in the alcove where he went to smoke, that didn’t seem like such a good idea. He had never considered the territorial implications of that stairwell before. It was seldom used and out of the way, opening into an area of the Sorbonne complex that received the least traffic of all the public spaces.

Germaine coolly continued to smoke while he appraised the group of young men surrounding him. All students at _Lycée Louis-le-Grand_ were required to participate in athletics, and he was sure some of these boys could box. His own training, at de Chardin’s suggestion, was in ju-jitsu. He felt pretty confident he could take them on one at a time. All together, however, it would be rough going.

His speculations were unnecessary, as it turned out. Yes, Bertrand pulled out a knife, and yes, he signaled for the others to seize Germaine and hold him down, but before they could enforce his orders, the ceiling erupted with vines. Like lightning, the plants crawled down the walls and stairs, and within a trice, the young men were completely bound by them. Indeed, those that had started to call out in terror had their mouths jammed full of the weeds. All except for Germaine.

He stood, bewildered by the chthonic shockwave of energy which rippled through the staircase, and continued to smoke his cigarillo.

When his pulse finished returning somewhat closer to normal, he extinguished the remaining butt on the floor—carefully so as not to touch any of the vines with its fire—and tracing the origins of the plants to the landing above them, started climbing the staircase to where he knew Virgil waited for him.

His parting shot as he left Bertrand behind was, “For the time being, I think it’s safe to say I have more powerful friends, and in higher places.”

He and Virgil spent the rest of their free time moving his possessions into Virgil’s room.

Within short order, the other two occupants of Virgil’s room moved out, claiming that the room was built over the gates to hell, and they were certain to be possessed by demons if they remained there. Even though Virgil and Germaine’s apparent immunity to hauntings was cited as a miracle, the truth was much less sacred, and much more profane.

“Roommates are inconvenient.” Hakkai declared, as he settled into Germaine’s backside for the third time that Saturday.

Germaine returned the favour to Virgil on Sundays.

* * *

Stories of the ‘miracle in the stairwell’ persisted, growing more twisted with each retelling. Since no one had seen Virgil in his shape as Hakkai except Germaine, there were no unnecessary complications involving rumours of demons—the real miracle, as far as Germaine was concerned. With this particular academy, however, he knew it was only a matter of time before some of the more powerful members of the clergy became involved. The Church was locked into a headlong battle with the French State over the future of its educational institutions, and the Cardinal wished to extend his influence by asking the Papal Enuncio to ask the Pope to beatify practically any French thing that moved. Germaine really did not want to show up in anybody’s miracle telegraph.

“That’s quite the talent you have.” Germaine mentioned to Virgil over supper, while munching on a mouthful of spinach.

“Thank you. Just count yourself fortunate that we managed to subdue the Minus Wave during your last incarnation.”

“The Minus—what? The Minus Wave?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Why’s that?”

“Let’s just say there are fewer negative side-effects.”

“Like?”

“Like homicidal mania, rapacity, and the irresistible urge to eat human flesh.”

“I see. That’s … good to know. Any chance of a sudden relapse?”

“Why? Are you worried?”

Germaine decided it would be best to leave the Lycée as soon as possible.

They took the train to Calais and sailed to Dover. From there, they boarded an ocean liner to Canada. They crossed Canada on the CPR and sailed from Vancouver to Shanghai, where Virgil’s Mandarin dialect was of little use, but Germaine couldn’t quite bring himself to greet the locals in theirs.

 

_—fin—_

 


End file.
